THE REST OF THE FAMILY.
The old house of Mount was a commodious but ugly house. It was not even
so old as it ought to have been. Only in one corner were there any
picturesque remains of antiquity, and that was in the back of the house,
and did not show. The only thing in its favour was that it had once been
a much larger place than it was now, and a detached bit of lime
avenue--very fine trees, forming in the summer two lovely walls of
tender shade--was supposed in the traditions of the place to indicate
where once the chief entrance and the best part of the mansion had been.
At the foot of the terrace on which these trees stood, and at a
considerably lower altitude, was the flower-garden, very formally laid
out, and lying along the side of the house, which was of dull brick with
very flat windows, and might almost have been a factory, so
uninteresting was it; but the lawns that spread around were green and
smooth as velvet, and the park, though not large, was full of fine
trees. Mr. Mountford’s room was in the back of the house, and Anne had
to go from one end to another to reach the common morning-room of the
family, which was the hall. This had been nothing but a mere passage in
former days, though it was square and not badly proportioned; but the
modern taste for antiquity had worked a great change in this once
commonplace vestibule. It had been furnished with those remains which
are always to be found about an old house, relics of past generations,
curtains which had been rejected as too dingy for wear a hundred years
ago, but now were found to be the perfection of tone and taste--old
folding screens, and chairs and tables dismissed as too clumsy or too
old-fashioned for the sitting-rooms of the family. All these together
made a room which strangers called picturesque, but which old neighbours
regarded with contempt, as a thing of shreds and patches. There was but
one huge window reaching from the ceiling almost to the floor, and an
equally large mantelpiece almost matching the window and opposite to it.
The large round table before the fire was covered with an old Indian
shawl carefully darned and mended for this use--a use which had revolted
all the old ladies in the county--and with books, magazines, and
newspapers, carefully arranged by old Saymore, the butler, in a kind of
pattern; for Saymore followed his young ladies, and took a great
interest in everything that was artistic. A work-table in one corner
overflowed with crewels; in another stood an easel. The place was full
of the occupations and fancies of the two girls who had fashioned it
into its present shape. While Anne was having the conversation with her
father which has been recorded, Mrs. Mountford and Rose were pursuing
their different employments in this room. Mrs. Mountford was a
contradiction to everything about her. She wore ribbons of the most
pronounced brightness, dresses of the old gay colours; and did worsted
work. She was a round plump woman, with rosy cheeks and a smiling mouth;
but she was not quite so innocent and easy as her looks indicated. She
could stand very fast indeed where any point of interest was
concerned--and she was doubly immovable in consequence of the fact that
her interests were not her own but those of Rose, and therefore she
could not be made to feel guilty in respect to them. She had a little
table of her own in the midst of all the properties--which she called
rubbish--accumulated by the girls, and there pursued her placid way week
after week and year after year, working, as if she had been born a
century earlier, groups of roses and geraniums for cushions and
footstools, and strips of many coloured work for curtains and rugs. Had
she been permitted to have her will, the house would have been furnished
with these from garret to basement; but as Rose was ‘artistic,’ poor
Mrs. Mountford’s Berlin wools were rarely made any use of. They were
given away as presents, or disposed of at bazaars. There was a closet in
her own room which was full of them, and a happy woman was she when any
girl of her acquaintance married, or a fancy fair was announced for any
charitable object, which reduced her stores. A workbasket full of the
most brilliant wools in the tidiest bundles, a German pattern printed in
squares, a little pile of tradesmen’s books in red covers, and a small
brown basket full of keys, were the signs of her little settlement in
the hall. These possessions stood upon a small table with three legs,
decorated with a broad band of Mrs. Mountford’s work. She had said
boldly that if she were not permitted to put her own work upon her own
table, she did not know what the world would come to. And upon hearing
this protest Anne had interfered. Anne was the only person who ever
interfered to save her stepmother from the tyranny exercised over her
by her own child; but Mrs. Mountford was not grateful enough to return
this service by taking Anne’s part.
Rose was the presiding spirit of the hall. Though she did not originate
anything, but followed her sister’s lead, yet she carried out all the
suggestions that ever glanced across the surface of Anne’s mind with an
energy which often ended in making the elder sister somewhat ashamed of
her initiative. Anne’s fancies became stereotyped in Rose’s execution,
and nothing but a new idea from the elder changed the current of the
younger girl’s enthusiasm. When Anne took to ornamental design, Rose
painted all the panels of the doors and window shutters, and even had
begun a pattern of sunflowers round the drawing-room (which had been
newly decorated with a dado and three kinds of wall-papers), when Anne
fortunately took to sketching from nature, and saved the walls by
directing her sister’s thoughts in another direction. The easel remained
a substantial proof of these studies, but a new impulse had changed the
aspect of affairs. In the course of the sketching it had been discovered
that some of the cottages on the estate were in the most wretched
condition, and Anne, with the instinct of a budding squire and
philanthropist united, had set to work upon plans for new houses. The
consequence of which was that Rose, with compasses and rulers and a box
of freshly-cut pencils, was deep in the question of sculleries and
wash-houses, marking all the measurements upon the plan, with her whole
heart in the work.
‘Anne is a long time with papa,’ said Mrs. Mountford; ‘I suppose she is
trying to talk him over; she might just as well try to move the house.
You girls never will understand that it is of no use arguing with papa.’
‘One never can help thinking that reason must prevail,’ said Rose,
without raising her head, ‘at the end.’
‘Reason!’ said Mrs. Mountford, lifting her hands and her eyebrows; ‘but,
even if it were always reason, what would that matter? As for Anne, she
has a great deal too much self-confidence; she always thinks she is
right.’
‘And so she is--almost always,’ said Rose, very busy with her measuring.
‘Do you happen to remember, mamma, whether it is ninety feet or a
hundred that the pigsty must be off the house?’
‘What should I know about pigsties? I am sure I often wonder papa takes
all the trouble he does when you are both so headstrong. Fortunately for
him he has me to talk to where _you_ are concerned; but Anne!----oh,
here she is--don’t say anything, she may not like to have it talked
about. So here you are at last, Anne; we thought you were never coming.
But I wish I had someone to do my work for me when I am busy about
something else, as Rose does for you. She never takes so much trouble on
my account.’
‘It is not her work,’ said Rose, offended, ‘it is my own. Mayn’t I have
something now and then that is my own? How many yards, Anne, do you
remember, must the pigsty be off the house?’
Anne did not remember this important piece of knowledge. ‘But,’ she
said, ‘it is in that book of specifications. It is dry to read, but it
is a very good book; you should have it on the table to refer to. You
have made the living room too large in comparison with the rest of the
house.’
‘Because they are poor,’ said Rose, indignantly. ‘is that to say that
they are to have nothing pretty in their lives?’
‘But there must be a good scullery,’ said Anne. She stood with a very
grave face behind her sister, looking over her shoulder at the drawings
spread out on the table. Whether it was the importance of the scullery,
or of the other matters concerning her own happiness which she had in
her head, it is certain that Anne’s countenance was very serious. The
very tone of her voice proved to those who knew her so well that her
mood was graver than usual. At other times the importance of the
scullery would have brought a tone of laughter, an accent of fun into
her voice; but her gravity was now quite real and unbroken by any
lighter sentiment. She was taller than her sister, and of a different
order altogether. Anne was rather pale than otherwise, with but a slight
evanescent colour now and then; her features good, her face oval, her
eyes dark grey, large and lucid, and with long eyelashes curling
upwards. But Rose, though she had all that _beauté de diable_ which is
the privilege of youth, was, like her mother, round and rosy, though her
pretty little face and figure had not the solidity, nor her complexion
the set and rigid tone which placid middle age acquires. The one face
over the other contrasted pleasantly; the elder serious, as if nothing
in heaven or earth could ever make her smile again; the younger bent
with momentary gravity and importance over her work. But they had no air
of belonging to each other. Nothing but an accident could have linked
together two beings so little resembling. The accident was Mr.
Mountford, whom neither of them was at all like. They were not
Mountfords at all, as everybody in the neighbourhood allowed. They took
after their mothers, not the one and indivisible head of the family; but
that did not really matter, for these two girls, like their mothers,
were no more than accidents in the house.
The ancient estate was entailed, and knew nothing of such slight things
as girls. When their father died they would have to give up Mount and go
away from it. It was true that there still would be a great deal of
land in the county belonging to one of them at least, for Mr. Mountford
had not been able to resist the temptation of buying and enlarging his
estate at the time when he married his first wife, and thought of no
such misfortune as that of leaving only a couple of girls behind him. A
long life and boys to succeed him were as certainties in his thoughts
when he bought all the lands about Charwood and the estate of Lower
Lilford. There they lay now, embracing Mount on every side, Mount which
must go to Heathcote Mountford, the head of the _other_ family. It was
grievous, but it could not be helped. And the girls were not Mountfords,
either the one or the other. They betrayed, shall we say, an inherent
resentment against the law of entail and all its harsh consequences, by
resembling their mothers, and declining to be like the race which thus
callously cast them forth.
Mrs. Mountford looked at them with very watchful eyes. She knew what it
was which had made her husband send for his eldest daughter into his
study after breakfast. It was a circumstance which often galled Anne, a
high-spirited girl, that her stepmother should be in the secret of all
her personal concerns; but still man and wife are one, and it could not
be helped. This fact, however, that everything was known about her,
whether she would or not, shut her lips and her heart. Why should she be
confidential and open herself to their inspection when they knew it all
beforehand without her? This stopped all inclination to confide, and had
its effect, no doubt, as all repression has, on Anne’s character. Her
heart was in a turmoil now, aching with anger and annoyance, and
disappointment, and a sense of wrong. But the only effect of this was to
make her more serious than ever. In such a mood to win a smile from her,
to strike her sense of humour, which was lively, or to touch her heart,
which was tender, was to open the floodgates, and the girl resented and
avoided this risk with all the force of her nature. And, truth to tell,
there was little power, either in Mrs. Mountford or her daughter, to
undo the bonds with which Anne had bound herself. It was seldom that
they appealed to her feelings, and when they made her laugh it was not
in sympathy, but derision--an unamiable and unsatisfactory kind of
laughter. Therefore it happened now that they knew she was in trouble,
and watched her keenly to see the traces of it; and she knew they knew,
and sternly repressed any symptom by which they might divine how much
moved she was.
‘You build your cottages your way,’ cried Rose, ‘and I will build mine
in mine. Papa will let me have my choice as well as you, and just see
which will be liked best.’
‘If Heathcote should have to be consulted,’ said Anne, ‘it will be the
cheapest that he will like best.’
‘Anne! I shouldn’t have thought that even you could be so unfeeling. To
remind us that dear papa----’ cried Mrs. Mountford; ‘dear papa! Do not
speak of his life in that indifferent way, at least before Rose.’
‘Oh, it would not matter,’ said Rose, calmly, ‘whatever happens; for
they are for the Lilford houses on our very own land. Heathcote hasn’t
anything to do with them.’
‘Anne might say, “Nor you either,” my Rosie,’ said her mother; ‘for
everybody knows that you are cut off out of it in every way. Oh, I don’t
find any fault. I knew it when I married, and you have known it all your
life. It is rather hard, however, everything turning out against us, you
and me, my pet; part of the property going away altogether to a distant
cousin, and the rest all tied up because one of you is to be made an
eldest son.’
‘Mamma!’ said Rose, petulantly, giving a quick glance up at her mother,
and shrugging her shoulders with the superiority of youth, as who would
say, Why speak of things you don’t understand? Then she closed her
compasses and put down her pencil. ‘Are we to have a game this
afternoon?’ she said; ‘I mean, Anne, are you going to play? Charley and
Willie are sure to come, but if you go off as usual, it will be no good,
for three can’t play.’
The colour came in a flood over Anne’s pale face. ‘Mamma plays better
than I do,’ she said. ‘I have a headache. I don’t think I shall do
anything this afternoon.’
‘Will Mr. Douglas have a headache too?’ said Rose; ‘he generally has
when you have. It is not much fun,’ she added, with a little virtuous
indignation, ‘for Charley and Willie to play with mamma.’
Mrs. Mountford showed no resentment at this frank speech. ‘No,’ she
said, ‘it is not much fun for Charley and Willie. I don’t think it has
been much fun for them since Mr. Douglas came. Anne likes his talk; he
is a very fine talker. It is more interesting to listen to him than to
play.’
‘Sometimes it is,’ said Anne gravely, though with another blush; and
then the two others laughed.
‘My dear, you bring it on yourself; if we are not to have your
confidence, we must have our laugh. We have eyes in our head as well as
other people--or, at least, I have eyes in my head,’ said the mother.
Anne could not but acknowledge that there was reason in what she said,
but it was not said in a way to soften the wounded and angry girl.
‘I do not ask you not to laugh,’ she said.
‘You look more like crying,’ said Rose; and she got up and threw her
arms suddenly about her sister, being an impulsive little person whose
sympathies were not to be calculated upon. ‘What is it, dear: tell
_me_,’ she cried, with her soft lips upon her sister’s cheek.
Anne’s heart swelled as if it would burst out of her breast. There are
states of mind in which everything can be borne but sympathy. The gates
so hastily rolled to and pushed close began to open. The tears came to
her eyes. But then she remembered that the threat her father had made
was not one to be confided to them.
‘Never mind. I have been talking to my father, and he and I don’t see
things in the same light. We don’t always--one can’t help that,’ said
Anne, in a subdued voice.
‘Come up to my room,’ said Rose in her ear. ‘Never mind mamma--oh, come
up to my room, Anne darling, and tell me all about it! I never was
anyone’s confidant before.’
But this was not a process which Anne, shy with a fervour of feeling
more profound than Rose could understand, or she herself express, felt
at all disposed to go through. She put her younger sister gently aside,
and brought her plans too to the table. ‘We had better settle about the
pigsties,’ she said, with a little relaxation of her gravity. She
laughed in spite of herself. ‘It is a safe subject. Show me, Rosie, what
you have done.’
Rose was still fresh to this pursuit, and easily recalled to it, so she
produced her drawings with little hesitation, and after a while forgot
the more interesting matter. They sat with their heads together over the
plans, while Mrs. Mountford pursued her worsted work. A moralist might
have found in the innocent-seeming group all that inscrutableness of
human nature which it is so easy to remark and so impossible to fathom.
Rose, it was true, had not much in her little mind except the cottages,
and the hope of producing a plan which should be approved as the best,
having in her heart a childish desire to surpass Anne, which by no means
diminished her faithful allegiance to her as the origin of all impulses
and setter of every fashion. But Anne’s heart, underneath the fresh
crispness of her muslin dress, and the apparent interest with which she
pursued her work, and discussed her sculleries, was beating high with
much confused and painful emotion. Indignation and a sense of wrong,
mingled with a certain contempt even for the threat which had wounded
her as an empty menace, never to be carried out--a false and fictitious
weapon meant for no end but that of giving her pain; and, on the other
hand, the disappointment of her hopes, and a certainty of severance from
the love which had been a revelation to her of so much in heaven and
earth of which she was unaware before--filled her being. She would not
give him up, but she would be parted from him. He would go away, and any
intercourse they might hereafter keep up must be maintained in
resistance to the authority under which she had lived all her life. Thus
what she had supposed to be the crown and glory of existence was
summarily turned into bitterness and wrong. She was turning it over and
over in her mind, while she sat there steadily comparing her
measurements with those of her sister, and wondering how long she must
go on with this in order to confound her stepmother’s suspicions, and
prove that she was neither discouraged nor rendered unhappy by what had
happened. Naturally, in her inexperience, Anne gave great importance to
this feat of baffling her stepmother’s observation, and looking ‘just as
usual;’ and naturally, also, she failed altogether in the attempt. Mrs.
Mountford was an experienced woman. She knew what it meant when a girl
looked too much as if nothing had happened. And she watched with great
vigilance, partly by simple instinct, partly with a slight sense of
gratification, that the elder daughter, who was so much more important
than her own child, should feel that she was mortal. It was not any
active malevolence that was in Mrs. Mountford’s mind. She would have
been horrified had it been suggested to her that she wished Anne any
harm. She wished her no harm; but only that she might feel after all
that life was not one triumph and scene of unruffled success and
blessedness--which is the best moral discipline for everybody, as is
well known.